Beauty Queen Sister

Their gazillionth album finds the Girls taking their own genre (folk) and exploring it as a concept from all angles: old-timey country, salty blues licks, bits of vaudeville, tinges of zydeco (couched in surf-rock lite on "Making Promises"), banjos, fiddles, songs about soldiers and sailors, and heaps of Americana as sweet and hearty as oatmeal with brown sugar (see "Birthday Song"). With a few heavy-handed exceptions, it's an interesting, experimental album from a duo that could easily just placate their fan base with the tightly harmonized love songs and lefty politicking they love them for.